Marie Kilroy has recently been published in Allegro Poetry Magazine, Loveliest Magazine and the Lummox Press. She graduated from the University of Mary Washington with a B.A. in English and lives in New York City.

Desert Seeds

“…things and animals – and our enjoyment of it is so indescribably beautiful and rich only because it is full of inherited memories of the engendering and birthing of millions. In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love come to life again and fill it with majesty and exaltation.” – Rilke

I lie flat against the flat Mexican plateau.The cacti’s silhouettesstand silently in the sunset like soldiers,arms raised skyward.

In the early evening the stars flood in like girls in Quinceañera gowns,grasshopper salt on their shiny lips,and they float above on the sky’s dance flooras the volcano with its icy hatpuffs his pipe to greet them.

Rilke believed in a future poet who comesto say the ecstasies that are unsayable.I believe him and the owl uttering wordsI cannot repeat. The black witch moth’sseven inch wingspan sets in motion a fireon the coast. Small animal skeletons litter the sandlike diamonds on a rich woman’s arm. We are all birthing all the time.I vow to love it all, even the solitude. I can see the seeds alightin the wind, birds to new births, the world overin majesty and exaltation.

City SwanIn the late evening in Central Park lies the edge of the lake--glowing in the little light from the moonlies the swan, from song to silence and stuck in the little lapsof water against earth, beak tucked in a Uas if she was trying to un-see,to look around the still-rooted treesin their black gowns like willows at a funeralmystical, ethereal in gossamer nightshadethe feathers still satin, the wings unfolded, leaving her round body exposed,her tiny feet in mud –O, mythological Swan; O regal Swan—felled, felled--A homeless man laughs at the sight—“That’s what’s next!!”and pees into the grass, stance askancethe vinegar smell, a fog smoking upwards in the branches--her body hardening against the soft waves.